Postal History

Everybody loves getting mail. But how many of you have celebrated that mail by creating a monument to the service? The citizens of Climax, Michigan did. The town, situated between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, was established by Judge Caleb Eldred in 1834. On December 3, 1896, Climax received the state’s first Rural Free Delivery* (RFD) service. RFD was still in its experimental phase, having just begun that October with a handful of routes in West Virginia. Daniel B. Eldred (the Judge’s great grandson) was the town’s postmaster and hired Lewis Clark and Willis Lawrence as rural carriers. One was said to have used a bicycle, the other a more traditional horse and buggy.

The community decided to show its appreciation for the service. They built a monument using 238 stones, one from each of the farms along the original rural routes. The 10’ tall monument was completed and dedicated on July 26, 1917. It was placed in the center of the town’s main intersection. Builders added one bronze tablet on each of the four sides commemorating groups critical in bringing Rural Free Delivery to the town. They were from the state Grange, the D.A.R., the Michigan Rural Letter Carriers Association and the Climax Men’s Fellowship Club.

Mason Fred Beals (left) and Clanton Riley posed next to the first layers of the monument.

Placing the light fixtures atop the finished monument.

A large crowd gathered to watch the dedication of the monument on July 26, 1917.

Rural Carrier Willis L. Lawrence, who worked on one of the original routes in 1896 retired in January 1934. When this photograph was taken, the monument was in its original position in the middle of an intersection. Signs were placed on the bottom warning drivers to “Keep to Right / Drive Slow.”

By the Second World War, the monument had become a traffic hazard. On November 3, 1947, it was moved from the middle of the intersection to a city park on Main Street, appropriately enough, across the street from the town’s post office.

The monument in its original position in the middle of Main Street.

The monument as it appears today on Main Street in Climax, Michigan.

*As mentioned above, the U.S. Post Office Department officially launched Rural Free Delivery in 1896. Rural Free Delivery is exactly what it sounds like: government-paid mail carriers began to deliver mail to rural areas at no additional charge. Many city dwellers had enjoyed the convenience of home delivery since 1863, but folks in rural areas had to pick up their mail at the nearest post office (which could be far away).

The main post office in Miami, FL in 1939. Taken by Marion Post during her travels with the FSA.

When I was about 4, I had an obsession with mail.

I’m not exactly sure why, but it probably had to do with the avid attention I paid to the “Mailtime” segment on Blue’s Clues. I absolutely loved writing letters, sticking on stamps, and placing them in the big blue mail box in front of my town post office.

Hence, when I applied to and eventually accepted a summer internship with the National Postal Museum, my mother wasn’t surprised in the least:

“Ah yes, the Postal Museum! You dragged me and your father around there for about 3 hours when you were 5! Have fun with all the stamps!”

Thanks Mom.

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Although I haven’t been working exclusively with stamps or mail, my experience this summer has been extremely rewarding. My project involved examining and documenting postal elements of the many photographs produced through the Farm Security Administrations’ (FSA) photography project. (Sounds daunting but it’s actually fun, I promise!) Through my examinations of the pictures, I found myself constantly seeing the name “Marion Post Wolcott” listed as the source of many of the photos. Since the group of photographers I had encountered so far was very much male-dominated, I was interested in her backstory.

So, as any self-respecting millennial would do, I typed her name into Google and got to work.

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Marion Post in 1940.

Two books and countless webpages later, I came to an important conclusion: Marion Post was not only an amazing photographer and cultural interpreter, but also an important trailblazer in her field.

A few important facts about Marion’s Farm Security Administration career and later life:

She was the first woman to be employed as a FULL TIME photographer by the Farm Security Administration. (Dorothea Lange was the first woman to be employed, but she was only part time).

She worked with the FSA from 1938 to 1942.

Marion travelled alone. Her superiors worried about this constantly when she was in more conservative areas but she proved to be at more of an advantage when immersing herself into local cultures to take photos.

Marion’s relationship with her childhood caretaker (an African-American woman named Reasie Hurd) made Marion sympathetic towards the sufferings of the African-American population in the United States during her later travels. It was this sympathy that allowed her to document all aspects of life in the areas she travelled to, and not just focus on the white communities as some other photographers did.

The Post Office in Aspen, CO during a blizzard. Taken by Marion Post in 1941.

•At the end of each day, she would write letters and talk about her days’ work, her quest to find suitable lodgings, and the people she encountered on her travels. Marion’s colorful personality came out in these letters, which were usually sprinkled with a healthy helping of profanity throughout.

•Marion left the FSA soon after she married Lee Wolcott because she felt underappreciated within the organization.

•Her work gained notoriety later in her life and although she never photographed professionally again, she took many photographs on her travels with her husband and later went on to win many awards.

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Right now you’re probably thinking, Okay this is great and all, but what does Marion Post have to do with the post office? Was her choice of subject for photography really that important? Did it really mean anything?

Farmers gather in front of the Linwood, KY Post Office. Taken by Marion Post in 1940.

In short, yes.

Throughout her travels, Marion’s task was to photograph the important parts of life in the areas she explored. She needed to highlight the effects of the Great Depression on the common people of the United States. To showcase the life of the local people, she photographed their commutes and errands along with important buildings and city centers.

With this task in mind, it is extremely important that many of the subjects of her photographs were post offices or other mail related subjects. The sheer number of photos taken by Marion alone cements the integral role the postal system plays in American society. While she took pictures of many other subjects, Marion also had a constant number of postal related pictures. Whether the post office took up an entire city block or it was more of a shack at the side of the road, Marion Post captured it with her camera, showing the country how important their local post offices truly were.

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The author in front of the National Postal Museum.

I would like to note that all of the pictures seen in this post (save for mine) are a part of the Library of Congress’ Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. I have used this as the primary tool for my research this summer and I encourage anyone who is even remotely interested in the FSA photography project to look up pictures in the catalog.

Veronica La Du is about to begin her junior year at The George Washington University, where she is double-majoring in History and Anthropology. Originally from Bay Head, New Jersey, Veronica is heavily involved with student theatre on GWU's campus as an Executive Board Member of Forbidden Planet Productions. She loves knitting, baking, reading and mail, although her obsession has subsided quite a bit.

This Sunday, July 24th, 2016, marks the 119th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s birth. Here at the National Postal Museum, we are proud to have on exhibit one of Amelia Earhart’s flight suits. It is leather and wool lined to protect the pilot from the cold temperatures of high altitudes. The National Postal Museum also possesses Earhart’s personal collection of flown mail with photographs. Earhart raised funds for her flights by carrying and autographing special letters that were then sold as collectors’ items to philatelists.

Courtesy of United States Postal Service

A native of Kansas, Earhart was a quintessential tomboy who allegedly kept a scrapbook during her youth of newspaper clippings about successful women in mostly male-oriented fields, such as film direction and production, law, advertising, management, and mechanical engineering. In addition to her groundbreaking and heroic flights, Earhart co-founded the Ninety-Nines in 1929, a still-active international organization which serves to provide mutual support and professional opportunities to women in aviation. A member of the National Women’s Party, Earhart was an early champion of the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal rights for women.

In honor of Amelia Earhart, her incredible determination and pioneering spirit, we’d like to share with you a few photos of the National Postal Museum’s Women’s History Month Celebration, held earlier this year. We were fortunate to have an Amelia Earhart impersonator – the very talented Pat Jordan of the American Historical Theatre of Philadelphia. In addition to hearing about the fascinating life and accomplishments of noted philatelist Amelia Earhart, there were games, stories, and a scavenger hunt as children of all ages learned about women’s roles in the United States Postal Service. Another special guest was United States Postal Inspector Kai Pickens!

Here are some of our favorite photos of the festivities:

“Amelia Earhart” elaborates on the mechanics of flying. Not only did the sale of her flown philatelic souvenirs help offset the expenses of her aeronautic adventures, it further ensured her legacy in aerophilately.

A bit of sisterly love while listening to “Amelia Earhart” describe her first solo transatlantic journey in 1932. Through their participation in the various Women’s History Month Celebration activities, Girl Scouts had the opportunity to earn Playing the Past and Detective badges.

Andrea, a National Postal Museum volunteer, reads aloud from the wonderful book, “Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride,” by Pam Muñoz Ryan, which is based on the real life friendship of Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt.

In 1971, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service was among the first federal law enforcement agencies to hire female agents. Here, Agent Kai Pickens describes her responsibilities. Currently, over 20% of the U.S. Inspection Service is female.

U.S. Postal Inspector Kai Pickens and “Amelia Earhart” pose together in the Historic Lobby. In a letter to her husband, written just prior to her final flight, Amelia Earhart was unwavering in her courage. "I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others."

Last summer, the National Postal Museum was fortunate enough to host two fantastic interns – Aleida Fernandez and Ellyse Stauffer – who worked over the course of three months with curator and historian Nancy Pope. Each had their own research project, which resulted in interesting and informative articles currently featured on the National Postal Museum’s website.

Anthony Comstock, 1844-1915

Aleida Fernandez delved into the rich history of the Anthony Comstock’s various crusades against “vice.” In her own words: “In the second half of the 19th century, New York City was a battleground between pious reformers and the ills and sins they believed were destroying the nation.” Anthony Comstock, a devout Puritan as well as a Special Agent of the U.S. Post Office, led the fight against pornographic materials, gambling, alcohol, and what he perceived to be the evils of the lottery. While much has been written of Comstock and censorship, his obsessive disdain for the lottery is often overlooked. Gambling had been a part of America culture since the 1600s, and was generally seen as a harmless distraction as long as it was played in a civilized and gentlemanly manner. Lotteries had frequently been used as a revenue source to help fund the colonies, and early American legislators often authorized lotteries to fund schools, roads, bridges and other public works.

By the mid to late 1800s, however, many lotteries had become rife with corruption, most notoriously the Louisiana Lottery. Numerous reformers denounced them on moral grounds, including Comstock, who was convinced that the lottery was a scam to all classes, races, gender and age. Furthermore, as Comstock asserted in his book, Frauds Exposed: How People are Deceived and Robbed, and the Youth Corrupted, the promise of getting something for nothing led to laziness, and laziness was, of course, the work of the devil.

A Louisiana State Lottery ticket.

In 1872, Comstock helped found the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to the supervision of public morality. The following year, he successfully lobbied Congress to pass an anti-obscenity bill, nicknamed the “Comstock Law,” which banned any federal transport of mail or other printed material that was considered "obscene, lewd, or lascivious," or relating to fraudulent lotteries, gift concerts, and other vice enterprises. The bill also prohibited the production or publication of any information related to the procurement of abortion or the prevention of conception and venereal disease. Violators were subject to a large fine, while the postmaster general received power to stop registered letters and money orders addressed to any illegal lottery. Comstock naturally made plenty of enemies, and his nearly ridiculous conviction as a self-proclaimed “weeder in God's garden” makes for a particularly astonishing saga. Read more about the battle between “good” and “evil” in Aleida Fernandez’s “All Bets are Off: Anthony Comstock, the Post Office Department and the Battle against the Lottery.”

Ellyse Stauffer explored the relationship between the United States Post Office Department and the development of routes to improve coast to coast travel in the mid-1800s. At this time, the United States was determined to expand settlements and industry out west, and consequently found it was necessary to establish a means of regular communication with the west coast. In a message to Congress, dated August 6, 1846, President James K. Polk explicitly called for the extension of the mail service. He wrote, “It is likewise important that all mail facilities, so indispensable for the diffusion of information and for building together the different portions of our extended Confederacy, should be afforded to our citizens west of the Rocky Mountains.” Mail could be transported by land, but this was an arduous and lengthy journey and only possible in hospitable seasons. Mail could also be sailed by clipper ship around Cape Horn at the tip of South Africa, a voyage of at least six months. The best option was actually to transport the mail by steamship to the Chagres River in Panama, overland across the Isthmus of Panama, then northward by steamship to Astoria, Oregon. An 1846 treaty between the United States and New Grenada (of which Panama was a state) afforded the U.S. right of way in this region.

In 1847, Congress sanctioned the Secretary of the Navy to advertise for contract bids for a mail service between New York and Panama. Later, the Committee of Naval Affairs was also authorized to contract for the construction and equipment of four steam warships, as well as for mail contracts to be established between the Secretary of the Navy and private operators. Around 1848, according to Ellyse: “The mail lines entered into the highly profitable passenger business, in addition to carrying mail, freight and intelligence vital to development.”

Broadside advertising steamship route through Nicaragua, March 1849.

Originally, travelers to the West Coast had the same two bleak options as the post: either to endure difficult land routes, or embark on a six-month plus voyage on a clipper ship around South Africa. Pioneers, especially following the discovery of gold in California, were eager to find a faster way. The solution was the same as it had been for mail transport: steamships by way of Central America.

The United States Government and its steamship contractors faced numerous challenges in the form of technical problems, corruption, outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera, corporate infighting and competition, and flat out war. Eventually, the invention of the transcontinental telegraph and the transcontinental railroad took precedent when it came to transmitting important information, or transporting mail, goods and people. But in their twenty years of service, steamships had a tremendous impact on U.S. history. Read more about the growth of the steamship industry and its significance in America’s development here, as well as the role it played throughout the Civil War, in Ellyse Stauffer’s meticulous and fascinating “Making Way: Steamship Mail in the 19th Century.”

Aleida Fernandez, an Oregon native, is a graduate of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, where she studied History and Music. After interning at both the National Postal Museum and Federal Computer Week, she joined the American Institutes for Research as a Project Assistant. Ellyse Stauffer recently graduated from American University, where she majored in International Studies. She is originally from Harleysville, PA, and intends to pursue a graduate degree in Historical Geography. Congratulations to both on their recent accomplishments. We will always fondly remember them, the time they spent here, and the great research that they did! Best of luck to Ellyse and Aleida!

Currently, three new interns are hard at work in the history department on a variety of intriguing projects that you will be able to check out later this year. Stay tuned!

How many times a day does your letter carrier stop by with your mail? Well once, of course. It might surprise you to learn that before 1950 carriers in some cities made several trips to homes and businesses each day. For decades the prevailing rule for mail deliveries was set in Section 92 of the 1873 Postal Laws and Regulations book. It stated that carriers would make deliveries “as frequently as the public convenience may require.” The phrase was left open to interpretation by postmasters. Just what did “the public convenience” require in their cities?

Postmasters were directed to look to the city’s business needs for direction. While several cities had numerous deliveries during the day for businesses and homes, businesses always had more deliveries on any given day. In one city predominantly residential areas might have two or even three deliveries a day. Businesses in the same city would have four or five deliveries because the public convenience was usually interpreted as keeping American businesses running at peak efficiency.

Households could receive two or three daily deliveries, but never more than that. And always less than business districts in the same city.

Free City Delivery began in 1863. As the service grew, postmasters began to get a feel for their city’s needs and began directing their carriers to offer more frequent service where needed. At the same time, by the 1880s carriers were agitating for better working conditions, including the number of hours they would be required to work on any given day. As new labor laws came into effect, postmasters had to juggle the demands of “public convenience” with the carriers’ demands and limited budgets for hiring additional or part-time carriers.

By the first decade of the 20th century some cities saw three to five daily deliveries to business areas, but often no more than twice a day deliveries to residential ones. America’s businesses were more than happy with this arrangement. In his Annual Report to Congress in 1911, Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock noted that the policy of reducing residential deliveries in order to increase those to business districts was “almost universally approved by business men, who are willing to have fewer deliveries at their residences in order to obtain more frequent service at their places of business.” [1]

Even before Parcel Post Service a carriers’ arms would be well full of mail for part of his daily rounds.

Life became more complicated after January 1, 1913. That’s the day that the Post Office Department introduced Parcel Post Service. In addition to the traditional core makeup of mail – letters, newspapers and magazines – came packages, millions of them! While carriers could take a good block’s worth of mail in their satchels before 1913, now they were responsible for piles of packages, including some that were perishable! To keep that mail moving (and received quickly) postmasters added wagons, and later trucks, with carriers who brought packages in separate trips.

By 1922 businesses in larger cities could receive as many as seven daily deliveries, in smaller cities, three or four. Brooklyn and Philadelphia both managed to make seven deliveries a day to some (but not all) of their business districts. In Brooklyn, seven out of 61 business delivery sections received seven deliveries a day. In Philadelphia four out of 139 businesses received that top number of deliveries. New York City maxed out at six deliveries a day to some of its business districts, and Chicago’s busiest business districts received five deliveries a day. Households in large cities continued to top out at three deliveries a day. Most saw the mail come to their doors once or twice a day.

Mail volume skyrocketed in the years following the end of the Second World War. Postal officials scrambled to respond to the unprecedented growth in mail volume. In 1949 there were 86,359 full-time city delivery carriers bringing mail to businesses and households across the country. Their numbers were supplemented by 32,373 substitute city carriers who were used to cover absent carriers or when mail volume was unusually large.

Parcel Post Service brought millions of packages into the mail stream and postmasters responded with carriers who focused on parcel deliveries

Something had to give. Postmasters would soon be unable to keep their carriers on a constant loop between post offices or relay boxes and household and business mailboxes. The options were limited. Hiring even more carriers was costly and keeping the current carriers on their routes longer ran headlong into labor law limitations. Postmaster General Jesse Donaldson chose to reduce deliveries. In 1949 four trip routes were reduced to three in business districts, and the residential areas with three trips a day were reduced to two.

On April 16, 1950, the Postmaster General ordered residential deliveries in all areas down to a single trip per day. Businesses continued to receive additional deliveries, although Saturday deliveries would always be one less than the rest of the week. By 1969 Postmaster General Winton Blount noted in his Annual Report that few business areas continued to require multiple daily deliveries. New York City managed to hang onto two deliveries a day in some areas through the 1990s, but standard practice today is a single delivery per day – business or residential.

Whether once or twice a day, a carriers’ arrival was often greeted with enthusiasm

[1] U.S. Annual Report of the Postmaster General, February 2, 1911, p. 21

These days, letter writing is a lost art. But I’m asking you to consider picking up a pen and paper and taking a few minutes to write a letter to someone. Why? Well for one it’s a way to spend some calm and thoughtful time doing something different and productive. Also because April is National Letter Writing month. A letter is a gift. When you have taken the time to write a letter – not grabbing your phone to jot a quick text, but actually write a letter – you are demonstrating to a recipient that he or she is important to you. So dig out those pens and paper and get to writing!

Until comparatively recently, letters were commonplace. Now a text can pop up milliseconds after it is sent, rendering letters comparatively useless. I’d like to share some letters from a time when mail provided the only way for people to communicate with each other over distances. As the only connections to family and friends far away, these missives held special significance. Not only did they bring the latest news (even if it came days, weeks or even months later), but they were physical manifestations of the senders. The loved ones’ hands wrote the words, folded the letter and sealed it into an envelope. Each letter still brings with it that gift, a physical connection that can’t be replicated through phones or tablets.

The museum’s “Customers & Communities” gallery uses audio segments from five immigrant letters to give visitors a chance to hear individuals’ thoughts about life in the new world.

Norwegian immigrant Henrietta Jessen moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the mid-19th century, leaving her parents and sisters, Norea and Dorea, behind. We use a copy of Henrietta’s letter in the museum to showcase the critical role of letters in connecting separated families. In a letter to her sisters dated February 20, 1850, she wrote: “Fate has indeed separated me from my native land and all that was dear to me there, but it is not denied me to pour forth my feelings upon this paper. My dear sisters, it was a bitter cup for me to drink, to leave a dear mother and sisters and to part forever in this life, though living.”

In two sentences, Henrietta capsulated how letter writing served people for generations. It was the vessel for all they wanted to share, and at the same time the only connection between separated families, possibly to the end of their days.

A copy of Henrietta Jessen’s letter is one of a handful used in a display in “Binding the Nation” to show how critical letters were to individuals who moved into the prairies and further west.

Another copy of a letter on display is from Mary Searls (wife of Niles Searls, who served as Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court). In 1854 she wrote her mother: “My Beloved Mother, What can I say—where can I begin—to tell you of all that has taken place within our little house the last two weeks. I wish I had written by the last steamer, as I might just as well have done for I was quite well, and busy sewing, but I could not bear to write again till I could tell you all. . . on the sofa beside me lies the sweetest, tiniest little boy that ever you saw, and every little while I go and uncover his little face and try to realize that it is indeed my little one,--mine and Niles's.” Mary Searls mentions sending her letters by steamer, a trip that would have taken a month just to reach an East Coast port. Add on the two weeks Mary mentions waiting to write and the time it would have taken for the letter to travel to its destination and you realize Mary’s mother did not know she had a grandson until almost two months after he was born! Quite a difference from today’s grandparents who post baby pics on Facebook within hours of a birth.Another wall in “Binding the Nation” features copies of letters as part of a visitor interactive.

Letters let us pour our emotions out onto a page to share with others. Unlike texting or phone calls, letters demand our attention before writing – a pause to get a word, phrase, or sentence just right because we can’t just push the delete button if we get it wrong.

After an historic and triumphant beginning in 1918, the U.S. airmail service settled into a series of experimental growth spurts. The original Washington-Philadelphia-New York City route was followed by a route connecting the nation’s two large financial centers, New York City and Chicago, and finally followed by connecting Chicago and San Francisco. Part of the Chicago-San Francisco airmail route even followed the old Pony Express route.

In 1920, the Post Office Department’s moderately friendly Democratic Congress was replaced by a majority Republican House and Senate. In order to obtain funding for continued airmail service experiments and growth postal officials spun a variety of expectations. The service would cost only slightly more than existing railway mail and speed delivery more than a day faster across the country.

Postmaster General Burleson and his 2nd Assistant PMG Otto Praeger (left), who ran the airmail service, knew they needed to provide some sort of incentive to get congressional approval for better appropriations. But it would be a tough sell. A series of recent deaths of airmail pilots in the Junkers-Larsen (JL-6) airmail planes was proving those planes unworthy of service and throwing doubts on the Post Office’s management of airmail.

That incentive was set to take flight on George Washington’s birthday in 1921. While the airmail service operated a transcontinental service between New York and San Francisco, mail was actually moved only partially by air. Airfields and planes were not yet equipped for night flight, so planes came to rest at the nearest connecting airfield at dusk. Mail was moved from planes to trains that ran all night long. In the morning, planes would take new bags of airmail from the post office and trains, flying it throughout the day.

Burleson and Praeger announced that they would begin transcontinental day AND night service on February 22, 1921. Two planes filled with mail would take off from New York flying west, and two planes would take off from San Francisco flying east. Knowing that the odds of a single series of planes and pilots making the entire trip was doubtful, they decided to stack the deck. This way, they thought, at least some of the mail would make it the whole way. The target time was hoped to be less than 36 hours. Bands and officials were on hand on both coasts to see the historic mail trips off in style. The westbound mail planes made it to Chicago (in spite of one forced landing in Pennsylvania), but were forced to stop there because of bad weather.

The eastbound planes flew fine until Nevada. There, pilot William E. Lewis, just weeks short of his wedding, had just taken off from Elko in his de Havilland airmail plane when it stalled. Lewis was killed in the crash. His mail was put into a standby aircraft and continued on. Praeger would not let the death of a pilot stop the great experiment. Pilot Frank Yager flew the eastbound mail from Cheyenne to North Platte, NE where pilot Jack Knight was ready to fly it on to Omaha. Knight’s departure was delayed by a mechanical problem and he took off at 10:44pm, arriving at Omaha at 1:10am the next morning.

Pilot William Lewis’s death certificate notes the cause of death as “accidental death by fall in aeroplane”

The brutal weather that had trapped the westbound pilots in Chicago was also a threat to the pilots flying east from Omaha. By this time there was only one pilot, aside from Knight, at the airfield, and he refused to take the mail up in that weather. All airmail field managers were being kept apprised of the experiment along the way and the staff in Omaha knew that if their mail did not get back up in the air, that was the end.

Omaha, Nebraska, airmail field in 1921

Jack Knight had never flown the Omaha-Chicago route before in daylight, let alone in the middle of the night, and in bad weather! Someone ripped a map off of the wall in the Omaha airmail field office and handed it to Knight. He studied it for a while and less than an hour after landing, he was back in the air.

Knight’s flight was just short of miraculous. He made it through the storm to Chicago, and his mail was rushed to waiting planes and pilots who finished the transcontinental mail journey, getting San Francisco’s mail (and letters added along the way) to New York City in 33 hours and 20 minutes, an astonishing feat at the time, beating the normal transit time of 70 hours. The mail flew 2,666 miles and the bags were brought into New York by pilot Earnest Allison. He turned them over to Division Superintendent J.E. Whitbeck, who immediately let Praeger down in Washington know they had arrived. Praeger was besides himself, alerting the media immediately with a prepared statement noting that this flight would “mean the speedy revolutionizing of the letter transportation methods & practices throughout the world.”Jack Knight in his de Havilland airmail plane

In the meantime, the press swooned, not over Praeger, but over Jack Knight, the “hero who saved the airmail.” The New York Times managed to snag the first interview with Knight, who described what we would have experienced as a harrowing and terrifying trip quite simply and succinctly. “I got tangled up in the fog & snow a little bit. Once or twice I had to go down and mow some trees to find out where I was, but it did not amount to much, except for all that stretch between Des Moines and Iowa City. Say, if you ever want to worry your head, just try to find Iowa City on a dark night with a good snow and fog hanging around. Finding Chicago, --why, that was a cinch. I could see it a hundred miles away by the smoke. But Iowa City—well, that was tough.”[1] (Right: Jack Knight the morning after he finished his historic flight. The bandage covered a broken nose acquired not that night, but a week earlier when he crashed his airmail plane in the Laramie Mountains.)

Congress agreed to continue funding the service, but cut the appropriation from $1.5 million to $1.25 million. Representative Tincher of Kansas disagreed with the majority. While he was right about Praeger’s motives, he was wrong about the amount of mail carried, which was about 400 pounds. Tincher argued that: “A day or two ago, knowing that this matter was coming up, they made a showing of how quickly they could fly from San Francisco to New York. They burned up only one man in one plane and got across with about a shirttailful of mail. They wanted to justify this raid on the treasury for $1,500,000.”[2]

Even with less money than he wanted, Praeger bragged that regular day and night transcontinental airmail would be a regular service by May. But Praeger’s boasts were bigger than the Department’s ability. Equipment and preparations just could not be made by that deadline. And, once President Wilson was out of office, Burleson and Praeger with him, postal priorities switched, with a focus on safety and security of the mail over showy demonstrations. Day and night airmail did finally become a regular service, but not for three more years.

In the meantime, Jack Knight continued to fly airmail for the Department, flying a total of 4,282.54 hours over 417,072 miles until his last U.S. Post Office flight on June 30, 1927. The Post Office created the roadmap for aviation at a time when private interests were unable to financial support such a venture. They turned the mail over to contractors in 1927. But even thought the Post Office stopped carrying the mail, Knight kept on going. He joined up with one an airmail contractors, National Air Transport, Inc. (soon to become United Airlines) and kept on flying. Eventually Knight moved from the cockpit to the boardroom, becoming a vice president of the airlines. Knight died almost 24 years to the day after his historic flight, passing away of complications from malaria on February 24, 1945.

[1] The New York Times, “Knight’s Story of Trip: Pilot Tells of Flight in Dark Through Snow and Fog,” February 24, 1921, p. 2.

Portrait of Ben Franklin rendered by artist Lloyd Branson in 1898. This painting is a copy of Joseph Siffred Duplessis’s famous life portrait of Franklin commissioned while Franklin was in Paris in 1779.

Sunday was Ben Franklin’s 310th birthday. He was born on January 17, 1706 in Boston. While others may celebrate the man for flying a kite in a thunderstorm or advocating the turkey as a national symbol (1), the Postal Museum celebrates his many contributions to postal history while he served as postmaster general under both the British crown and the Continental Congress of the fledgling United States.

Franklin’s postal career began after he moved to Philadelphia. There, he caught the attention of Col. Spotswood, the British

This 5-cent stamp was one of the first federal postage stamps issued in the U.S., appearing in 1847 along with a 10-cent George Washington stamp.

Postmaster General who was looking to replace Philadelphia’s current postmaster, Andrew Bradford. Spotswood named the 31-year-old Franklin to the post in 1737. His work impressed the British enough that in 1753 he was named co-Deputy Postmaster General with William Hunter. After a 1,600-mile inspection of post offices, he organized a weekly mail wagon between Philadelphia and Boston. Franklin's postal riders traveled day and night by horseback in relays, using lanterns to light their way.

Benjamin Franklin helped create the first rate chart used by colonial postmasters. The chart converted postage charges from British to colonial currency. Under Franklin, mail delivery time between cities was cut in half, making the colonial post both efficient for colonists and profitable for the Crown. But profits weren’t everything and Franklin’s revolutionary writings earned him a dismissal in 1774. Ben wasn’t out of a job for long. The very next year, the Continental Congress appointed him as postmaster general of the United Colonies at an annual salary of $1,000. Franklin’s duties to colonies took him elsewhere and he left postal work for good in 1776.

While we tend to think of Franklin as the nation’s first postmaster general, Samuel Osgood was the first postmaster general of the United States, appointed on September 26, 1789 by George Washington. Franklin’s position has long been celebrated on U.S. stamps, including the first stamps issued in 1847 (one depicted Franklin, the other Washington). He was even on one of the four stamps issued in 1993 celebrating the opening of the National Postal Museum!

The rates on the chart, which became effective October 10, 1765, remained unchanged until the American Revolution. The original rates, expressed in British currency, were converted to pennyweights and grains of silver so that postage could be computed in colonial currency. Charts such as this were displayed in local post offices.

A stamp featuring Franklin was part of a set of four issued to celebrate the opening of the Postal Museum in 1993.

(1) This myth rises from a letter from Franklin to his daughter commenting that the design of an eagle selected for use as the national symbol looked like a turkey. He followed that comment up with comparisons of each bird, “I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America… He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”

Charles Ames was born on February 2, 1894 in Jackson, Michigan. By the time he signed on with the U.S. Airmail Service on December 8, 1920 he already had more than 700 hours in the air.

Ames was a steady and reliable pilot who had his share of forced landings, including a particularly frightening one on September 26, 1922. While flight testing a de Havilland airplane out of Hazelhurst Field, New York, Ames reported that "the con rod in cylinder number four, right, broke, one piece going through the crank case and starting the motor on fire while in the air." Flying over Westbury, New York, at the time, Ames responded well to the crisis. "After cutting motor and turning on pressure pyrene tank [fire extinguisher], I landed the ship ok in plowed rolling field and tried to put out fire with my hand pyrene, which was impossible. When the flames reached center section and gravity tank I left ship which burned to the ground."

On July 3, 1924, Ames was flying the last leg of the airmail from San Francisco to New York City when he arrived there seven minutes ahead of schedule in spite of raging thunderstorms across Central Pennsylvania. But the storms were nothing to Ames, as the New York Times quoted him saying “Air mail pilots expect to encounter heavy thunderstorms during most of their trips at this time of year.”

Ames’ luck ran out on October 1, 1925. He was flying a de Havilland mail plane over the mountains near Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on the New York to Cleveland run. Bellefonte was the first stop, flying west, on the route. That leg of the trip usually took about two hours to fly. Ames had left Hadley Field, New Brunswick (the eastern terminus of the coast to coast service) at 9:40 p.m. This was part of the day and night airmail service that carried mail from coast to coast. The watchman at Hartleton, Pennsylvania, an emergency airmail landing field twenty miles east of Bellefonte, reported he heard the airplane flying overhead at 11:35 that night. That was the last report of Ames and his plane. At first airmail officials thought that Ames had probably made a forced landing and would contact them by telephone, as required. When no word was heard from him by the next morning, a search was organized for the missing flyer.

Headline from the Atlanta Constitution, October 4, 1925

The search for Ames and his airplane took several days and was the focus of attention across the northeast. On October 6, a reporter for the Washington Post working out of nearby Clarion, Pennsylvania, updated readers on the search. "Practically all the activities in connection with the search for Charles H. Ames, air mail pilot, missing since Thursday night, were shifted to Clarion tonight after another fruitless day's work by the hundreds of volunteers on foot and a dozen Government aviators engaged in the hunt. About 300 members of the Pennsylvania National Guard, mobilized at the request of Gov. Pinchot, arrived here tonight and will join in the search tomorrow.”

For the next few days a dozen aircraft flew back and forth over the suspected crash zone while nearly a thousand volunteers tramped through the ravines and underbrush below. The Pilots’ Association of America offered a $500 reward for finding Ames, an amount doubled by other pilots and friends of the pilot.

Wreckage of Ames’ airplane

Their worst fears were realized on October 11 when 15-year-old Harry Dobson discovered the wreck. Ames’ body was found still strapped inside his downed airplane. Ames had apparently been flying low, possibly becoming lost in a dense fog and had crashed through trees into the north side of a ridge in the Nittany Mountains. Ames had been killed on impact. The airplanes' wings had been destroyed when it crashed into the trees. The trees were so close that they covered the ship, which had made it almost impossible to locate. Ames was the first (though sadly not the last) casualty of the day and night airmail service connecting New York City and San Francisco. Years later a monument to Ames was erected by a local resident, Daniel Lucas, at the site of the crash: “Charles H. Ames, U.S. Air Mail Service Crashed Here October 1, 1925.”

At the outset of this project, the Sidney N. Shure Collection was very nicely housed in high quality, archival three-ring binders, which we call albums. Each album represented a distinct subject area, and was preserved in the arrangement Mr. Shure had originally created. We knew approximately what objects we might find in any given album, but very little of that information was catalogued in our database. We would only have the opportunity to image 1,000 album pages during our Rapid Capture week, but I wanted to take this chance to digitize as much of the collection as possible.

Cataloguing one of the many Shure albums

At the National Postal Museum, we consider an object catalogued when it is in our database with its correct accession number and location, as well as a department listing, name and description. While there is a great deal more information about any given object we would like to include, we try to keep our minimum catalogue criteria relatively simple. The hard part of cataloguing collections objects is just getting them in the database at all - we can always add more information as needed.

Cataloguing a group as large as the Sidney N. Shure Collection was an ambitious undertaking for our staff. I was able to recruit some collection staff to help catalogue each album by filling out pre-defined Excel spreadsheets. Staff members could take albums to their desks for a day at a time to physically number the pages and enter catalogue data into the spreadsheets. When the spreadsheet for an album was complete, I used an importer tool to generate the new records in our database.

In this way, our fabulous departmental team was able to work together to create 3,600 records in just three months! With the actual imaging of the Sidney N. Shure Collection happening now, our staff cataloguing endeavor has slowed. There are still about 20 albums to catalogue, but I am certain we will finish the remaining albums by the end of the year. It is my hope that we will be able to complete the imaging the remainder of this collection, too. Keep checking our site for all the great new collections our digitization projects make available!

Staff recorded information about each album page in a spreadsheet that was imported into the database

A big thank you to Linda, Beth, Becca, Manda, Patricia and Meg for all your help cataloguing these albums!